Active Service Part 29

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE next morning Coleman awoke with a sign of a resolute decision on his face, as if it had been a development of his sleep. He would see Marjory as soon as possible, see her despite any barbed-wire entanglements which might be placed in the way by her mother, whom he regarded as his strenuous enemy.

And he would ask Marjory's hand in the presence of all Athens if it became necessary.

He sat a long time at his breakfast in order to see the Wainwrights enter the dining room, and as he was about to surrender to the will of time, they came in, the professor placid and self-satisfied, Mrs. Wainwright worried and injured and Marjory cool, beautiful, serene. If there had been any kind of a storm there was no trace of it on the white brow of the girl.

Coleman studied her closely but furtively while his mind spun around his circle of speculation.

Finally he noted the waiter who was observing him with a pained air as if it was on the tip of his tongue to ask this guest if he was going to remain at breakfast forever. Coleman pa.s.sed out to the reading room where upon the table a mult.i.tude of great red guide books were crus.h.i.+ng the fragile magazines of London and Paris. On the walls were various depressing maps with the name of a tourist agency luridly upon them, and there were also some pictures of hotels with their rates-in francs-printed beneath.

The room was cold, dark, empty, with the trail of the tourist upon it.

Coleman went to the picture of a hotel in Corfu and stared at it precisely as if he was interested. He was standing before it when he heard Marjory's voice just without the door. "All right! I'll wait." He did not move for the reason that the hunter moves not when the unsuspecting deer approaches his hiding place. She entered rather quickly and was well toward the centre of the room before she perceived Coleman. " Oh," she said and stopped. Then she spoke the immortal sentence, a sentence which, curiously enough is common to the drama, to the novel, and to life. " I thought no one was here."

She looked as if she was going to retreat, but it would have been hard to make such retreat graceful, and probably for this reason she stood her ground.

Coleman immediately moved to a point between her and the door. "You are not going to run away from me, Marjory Wainwright," he cried, angrily.

" You at least owe it to me to tell me definitely that you don't love me-that you can't love me-"

She did not face him with all of her old spirit, but she faced him, and in her answer there was the old Marjory. " A most common question. Do you ask all your feminine acquaintances that? "

"I mean-" he said. "I mean that I love you and-"

"Yesterday-no. To-day-yes. To-morrow-who knows. Really, you ought to take some steps to know your own mind."

" Know my own mind," he retorted in a burst of in- dignation. "You mean you ought to take steps to know your own mind."

" My own mind! You-" Then she halted in acute confusion and all her face went pink. She had been far quicker than the man to define the scene.

She lowered her head. Let me past, please-"

But Coleman st.u.r.dily blocked the way and even took one of her struggling hands. "Marjory-"

And then his brain must have roared with a thousand quick sentences for they came tumbling out, one over the other. * * Her resistance to the grip of his fingers grew somewhat feeble. Once she raised her eyes in a quick glance at him. * * Then suddenly she wilted. She surrendered, she confessed without words. " Oh, Marjory, thank G.o.d, thank G.o.d-"

Peter Tounley made a dramatic entrance on the gallop. He stopped, petrified. "Whoo!" he cried.

"My stars! " He turned and fled. But Coleman called after him in a low voice, intense with agitation.

" Come back here, you young scoundrel! Come baok here I "

Peter returned, looking very sheepish. " I hadn't the slightest idea you-"

" Never mind that now. But look here, if you tell a single soul-particularly those other young scoundrels-I'll break-"

" I won't, Coleman. Honest, I won't." He was far more embarra.s.sed than Coleman and almost equally so with Marjory. He was like a horse tugging at a tether. "I won't, Coleman! Honest!"

" Well, all right, then." Peter escaped.

The professor and his wife were in their sitting room writing letters. The cablegrams had all been answered, but as the professor intended to prolong his journey homeward into a month of Paris and London, there remained the arduous duty of telling their friends at length exactly what had happened. There was considerable of the lore of olden Greece in the professor's descriptions of their escape, and in those of Mrs. Wainwright there was much about the lack of hair-pins and soap.

Their heads were lowered over their writing when the door into the corridor opened and shut quickly, and upon looking up they saw in the room a radiant girl, a new Marjory. She dropped to her knees by her father's chair and reached her arms to his neck.

" Oh, daddy! I'm happy I I'm so happy! "

" Why-what-" began the professor stupidly.

" Oh, I am so happy, daddy!

Of course he could not be long in making his conclusion.

The one who could give such joy to Marjory was the one who, last night, gave her such grief.

The professor was only a moment in understanding.

He laid his hand tenderly upon her head " Bless my soul," he murmured. "And so-and so-he-"

At the personal p.r.o.noun, Mrs. Wainwright lum- bered frantically to her feet. " What ? " she shouted.

Coleman ? "

" Yes," answered Marjory. " Coleman." As she spoke the name her eyes were shot with soft yet tropic flashes of light.

Mrs. Wainwright dropped suddenly back into her chair. "Well-of-all-things!"

The professor was stroking his daughter's hair and although for a time after Mrs. Wainwright's outbreak there was little said, the old man and the girl seemed in gentle communion, she making him feel her happiness, he making her feel his appreciation. Providentially Mrs. Wainwright had been so stunned by the first blow that she was evidently rendered incapable of speech.

" And are you sure you will be happy with him?

asked her father gently.

" All my life long," she answered.

" I am glad! I am glad! " said the father, but even as he spoke a great sadness came to blend with his joy. The hour when he was to give this beautiful and beloved life into the keeping of another had been heralded by the G.o.d of the s.e.xes, the ruthless G.o.d that devotes itself to the tearing of children from the parental arms and casting them amid the mysteries of an irretrievable wedlock. The thought filled him with solemnity.

But in the dewy eyes of the girl there was no question.

The world to her was a land of glowing promise.

" I am glad," repeated the professor.

The girl arose from her knees. " I must go away and-think all about it," she said, smiling. When the door of her room closed upon her, the mother arose in majesty.

" Harrison Wainwright," she declaimed, "you are not going to allow this monstrous thing! "

The professor was aroused from a reverie by these words. "What monstrous thing ? " he growled.

" Why, this between Coleman and Marjory."

" Yes," he answered boldly.

" Harrison! That man who-"

The professor crashed his hand down on the table.

"Mary! I will not hear another word of it! "

" Well," said Mrs. Wainwright, sullen and ominous, " time will tell! Time will tell!"

When Coleman bad turned from the fleeing Peter Tounley again to Marjory, he found her making the preliminary movements of a flight. "What's the matter? " he demanded anxiously.

" Oh, it's too dreadful"

" Nonsense," lie retorted stoutly. " Only Peter Tounley! He don't count. What of that ? "